General

We started the day looking for possible news stories via the Warwickshire Police website, the newswires, the newspaper and BBC contacts. We weren't having much luck but one of our mentor Julie-Anna's contacts told us that John Reid, the Home Secretary was visiting some allotments in Nuneaton. He was there to speak to probationers doing community service.

We then had a video link to Coventry and Warwickshire radio where we spoke to Station Editor David Clargo. There was also other groups of school students and altogether we discussed all of our ideas for stories. We explained we were planning on interviewing John Reid about the work of the offenders.

John Reid is interviewed in Nuneaton

We went out to get opinions of members of the public in Nuneaton town centre. We recorded short interviews called vox pops which we later edited ourselves. We also got to decide which quote to use in our report.

At 12.20 we did a live report from the library about what we had done so far in the day. It was pretty scary knowing that if we went wrong we just had to live with it!

Later that afternoon we travelled to Aberdeen Road ready for our interview with John Reid. We had to stand in the freezing cold for 30 minutes waiting. We stood talking with other reporters from Mercia FM and the Telegraph. Eventually four cars came round the corner. There were two 4x4s and John Reid arrived in a black Jaguar.

We had to fight with the other reporters over who was going to ask Mr Reid the next question. He was really nice to us and answered all of our questions with perfect detailed answers. The other photographers were kind too and helped Sam take better pictures.

Back at the library we edited our interview with John Reid and recorded the introduction to our report.

We hope you enjoy listening to our report.